Facebook Reels is catching up to Instagram Reels… which is catching up to TikTok.
Facebook Reels adds some much-needed features.
Credit: Mashable illustration / Bob Al-Greene
Every social media platform thinks you want to watch longer videos.
Last year, TikTok increased the maximum length of a video post from three minutes to ten minutes. Instagram Reels followed suit, increasing its 60-second maximum length to 90 seconds in June 2022(Opens in a new tab). Today, Meta announced that Facebook Reels(Opens in a new tab) can be up to 90 seconds long, too.
Meta is also launching more creative tools for Facebook Reels creators — all of which were already rolled out for Instagram Reels months ago, leading some people to believe that Meta tested the changes out first on Instagram Reels before transitioning them to Facebook Reels. Almost all of the new tools appear to be imitations of tools already available on TikTok.
The new tools include a template feature that helps users create Facebook Reels using trending templates, ready-made Reels from Memories, and Grooves, a tool that automatically syncs the motion in your video to the beat of a song.
It’s easy to compare Facebook Reels to its short-form video predecessor TikTok, but Reels on both Instagram and Facebook has proven to be a formidable force all on its own, particularly in the face of potential TikTok bans. Just look at India: After the government banned TikTok across the nation, both Instagram and YouTube saw significant increases in downloads(Opens in a new tab).
Christianna Silva is a Senior Culture Reporter at Mashable. They write about tech and digital culture, with a focus on Facebook and Instagram. Before joining Mashable, they worked as an editor at NPR and MTV News, a reporter at Teen Vogue and VICE News, and as a stablehand at a mini-horse farm. You can follow them on Twitter @christianna_j(Opens in a new tab).
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